Joke Collection Website - Bulletin headlines - Matrix, Dreams and The Truman
Matrix, Dreams and The Truman
Have you ever watched "Inception" and "The Truman Show"? If not, then you must have watched "The Matrix", right? These are often classified as skeptical films. If you follow the world view in the film, you can wonder whether you are in a dream, trapped in a reality show, or plugged into a supercomputer - in a nutshell, "doubt whether the world is real." . However, philosophers are usually not satisfied with such general statements. They like to distinguish different versions of skepticism and discuss the scope of each version.
Let’s start with the most classic “The Matrix”.
The skepticism in "The Matrix" originated from Hilary Putnam's "brain in a vat" thought experiment. If my brain was plugged into a supercomputer from birth, would I discover that my world was false? Unlike "The Matrix", Putnam did not allow bugs to appear in the virtual world's programs, so you cannot overturn its reality through loopholes in the surrounding world. Putnam's classic "escape" method is to point out that this ideological assumption is fundamentally inconsistent for us: if I were a brain in a vat, then all our beliefs would be wrong. The latter proposition is contradictory, because if all beliefs are false, then the belief "all beliefs are false" will also be false, so there must be a correct belief. In this way, it is not "all my beliefs are false" and I cannot be a "brain in a vat".
You can argue that no, the belief "I am a brain in a vat" is still true. It's fake for people in the Matrix to eat and dress, and it's fake to fall in love and kill each other, but they are indeed "living in the Matrix". Putnam's response was that the words in the brain-in-a-vat world were not indicative of real things. Every time you see a tree in there, it's just the effect of brain waves, there's no real tree in front of you. And your so-called blue sky and white clouds have nothing to do with the blue sky and white clouds in the real world - yes, the computer can show you what the "real" world looks like, but it can also set you on Mars, hell or far away. In this case, do you still think that the "tree" you call really refers to a tree? And since what you call "tree" cannot indicate the real tree, then what you call "tank" and "brain" cannot indicate the real tank and brain. In this way, the eerie hypothesis "I am a brain in a vat" becomes as meaningless as "I saw a tree." Yes, nihilism of meaning may be scary, but at least we no longer have to worry about skepticism: either we are not brains in a vat, and everything will be fine; or we are brains in a vat, but can never truly understand "we are brains in a vat." brain”, there is no need to draw any discordant conclusions from it.
You may be hesitant to speak, feeling that something is wrong. Yes, there may be something wrong with Putnam's argument. But to overturn it, you probably need to first deny the "causal constraints on semantics." The causal restriction of semantics means that if your word "A" is to refer to thing A, then your conception and use of this word must have an appropriate causal relationship with this thing. You may have never seen a pig, let alone a pig running, but you have eaten pork, so when you say "pig", you can still refer to a pig appropriately. Even if you are unfortunate (or very lucky) and have never eaten pork, then there are always friends you know who have, right? Once there is, when you hear the word "pig" from their mouths, the red thread of cause and effect will be drawn between the real pig and your "pig". On the contrary, if you live in a world without pigs, but you happen to write the word "pig" on the beach and pronounce it the same as us, sorry, it is still difficult for us to recognize that you are talking about our world. pig. In Putnam's view, the words "vat" and "brain" are to a brain in a vat what "pig" is to someone who has never seen a pig. If you want to refute Putnam, you can think about it: is the "semantic causal restriction" unreasonable at all, or is there actually some appropriate causal connection between "vat", "brain" and the brain in the vat? Woolen cloth?
Let’s put the brain in the vat aside and talk about dream skepticism. Don't think that "Inception" is as good as "The Matrix" and their skepticism is just as damaging. Indeed, the world of "The Matrix" is more extreme, but precisely for this reason, the skepticism of "Inception" is "more powerful."
Suppose you drive through a field and see a granary in the field. You chant, "Ah, granary!" In this case, you actually see a granary with your eyes and have a feeling. corresponding beliefs. We can think of this as an ideal cognitive situation in which you "know" that there is a granary ahead (otherwise, no one would know anything).
Let’s also assume that there are countless fake grain silos in the fields you drive through. And if you see one of them while driving, you will still sigh "Ah, granary!" instead of "Ah, fake granary!" In other words, you can't tell the real thing from the fake one visually. In this case, even if what you happen to see is a real granary, and you only see a granary-like object, it is difficult to admit that you "know" that there is a granary ahead. After all, your judgment is highly unreliable in this situation.
Alvin Goldman published this famous thought experiment of "fake barns" in 1976. One of Goldman's arguments is that if we want to know a thing P, then we must be able to distinguish situations in which P is true from those "relevant" situations in which P is not true. In the first situation just now, you know that there is a granary in front of you (even though you can't actually distinguish between a real and fake granary) because there is no fake granary nearby at all, and the fake granary is not the relevant situation you recognize this time. In contrast, in the second case, you can easily encounter fake granaries, which become the relevant situation, but unfortunately you cannot distinguish them, so you do not "know" that what you are looking at is a real granary.
Let’s accept Goldman’s theory for now and return to the question of skepticism. To know why the skepticism in "Inception" is more destructive, we need to clarify two points:
First, what does skepticism threaten? Indeed, if we are trapped in the Matrix or the Truman reality show, we are "unhappy," "repressed," and "not free." But whether you are free or not has nothing to do with whether you recognize the context of skepticism. Even if you know you are in the Matrix, even if you find out you are Truman, you are still not free and you still have to fight. Skepticism, by contrast, is concerned with our knowledge. If I'm in the Matrix, then all my beliefs about the world will be wrong, and if I'm dreaming, then I don't have to do physics exercises, because the laws of physics may not apply the next second.
Another point that should be emphasized is that the question of skepticism is not to ask "How can I know if I fall into the Matrix?" but to say "If I cannot rule out that I have fallen into the Matrix, should I still Can you know other things? "Suppose you are sleepy and want to sleep while surfing the Internet one night, but suddenly say to yourself, "I can't rule out whether I am in the Matrix, so is it harmful to my health to stay up late now?" At this time, your mother turned off the WIFI router and scolded, "What's wrong with The Matrix? Go to bed!" Think about it, it's right. We don't have to worry about something as far away as The Matrix. So you go to sleep, dreaming that you are staying up late, and when your mother is about to turn off the WIFI and say, "The Matrix, go to bed quickly," you suddenly wake up: "No, although the Matrix is ??far away, the dream is very close. ! Although no one has been to the Matrix, everyone dreams." So the next night, when your mother was about to turn off the WIFI again, you stopped her and persuaded her: "Yes, the Matrix is ??very far away, so I can't deny that I know that staying up late is bad for the body by saying that I can't rule out whether I will fall into the Matrix." Not good. But people often dream, so I am probably in a dream, and dreams are the "related situations" that I usually recognize. In dreams, there is no such thing as whether staying up late is good for the body. Come on, according to Goldman's theory, we don't know whether my "staying up late" will harm my health. Otherwise, please let me play for a while."
We will see. , the reason why the skepticism of "Inception" is more powerful than that of "The Matrix" is because the skeptical situations it involves are closer and more relevant. So, does the existence of dreams really constitute a reason for us to doubt knowledge?
At this time, your mother thought you were crazy, but instead of sending you to the hospital or asking for help from a psychiatrist, she decided to use the power of reason to save you.
She rummaged through philosophical works related to epistemology and finally found the answer in Ernest Sosa. Sosa believes that "relevance" depends not only on our cognitive objects and cognitive environments, but also on our cognitive processes. To put it simply, the reason why we don’t know that we see a granary in the second situation of Goldman’s thought experiment is because we still use our visual cognitive faculties when encountering fake granaries. But if you are very tired on the day you come to the field, immediately lie down on the steering wheel after seeing the real granary, and prepare to take a nap while driving. Moreover, every time you pass by a fake granary in the future, you will hear a song of "Ah, granary!" coming from a distance. Suppose again that you happen to only pass by that one real granary during the whole process. So, do we still think you didn’t know there was a granary ahead? By this point, Goldman's skeptical case has been greatly reduced. After all, the way you perceive a false granary is different from the way you perceive a real granary. We cannot assume that because someone else is blind, the information he obtains through hearing is also biased. Sosa believes that although people often dream, dreams do not constitute relevant situations in our daily lives because our cognitive methods are different when we are awake and in dreams.
"But I still don't know if I'm dreaming!" You may object. Yes, but please think about it, do you "not know" that staying up late is harmful to your health?
Of course, your mother may not have the patience to read Sousa. She may just pinch you hard and ask, "Does it hurt?" . Descartes and J. L. Austin both mentioned that dreams have distinctive "experience qualities." Capturing these qualities will reveal that you are actually in a dream. Therefore, when we do not notice these abnormalities, we have reason to think that we are awake. The top in "Inception" takes advantage of the experiential qualities of dreams. But you must know that not all dreams will be so friendly and prompt "Hi! I am a dream!" Moreover, even if something strange appears in the dream, we may not be surprised. How many times have you flown up in a dream, it feels natural; but if you fly up in reality, you may scream incessantly - according to Sosa's theory, we do not have the same cognition in dreams and when we are awake. ability. In other words, real dreams can be completely reversed from Inception: you pick up a top and watch it spin and spin, so you believe that you are really awake.
Hearing Sosa's theory may raise your eyebrows in the same way you might hear Goldman or Putnam frown. Yes, while Sosa nicely responds to dream skepticism, his theory assumes that cognitive processes are necessary components of “knowledge.” You see a tree and believe "there is a tree ahead." This belief constitutes knowledge not because you had a visual experience of the tree, but because your belief was formed "through" vision. Vision is a proper way of knowing, so your beliefs ultimately constitute knowledge. On the contrary, if you guess that there is a tree in front of you when you see nothing, even if you guess correctly, you do not know that there is a tree in front of you in the first place. Because guessing is not a proper cognitive process. The reason why our waking knowledge is not affected by the possibility of dreams is that waking knowledge consists of specific "cognitive processes" that have no role in dreams. There are many counterarguments to Sosa's theory (which may be exactly what you were looking for when you frowned). One of the most typical rebuttals is that in many cases of “knowledge”, cognitive subjects do not really use their own cognitive processes. For example, the "divine revelation" that Westerners admire so much - the knowledge that God appears directly to humans - does not rely on any activities of humans as cognitive subjects, but divine revelation is considered a model of perfect knowledge. Chinese people's dream entrustment can also be regarded as a kind of dream. "Grandson, I buried three hundred taels of silver in the backyard. Remember to dig it up when you get up tomorrow." "My child, actually your biological father is..." Of course, whether dreams and divine revelations count as knowledge is also controversial. Atheists can explain them as coincidences - even if they did dig out three hundred taels of silver the next day, it was just their own good luck. But atheism is not the only way to explain the world. If God exists, or the soul is immortal, then divine revelation and dreams can be ways to obtain knowledge, although they cannot be regarded as "cognitive processes", or are just quite weird cognitive processes.
Finally, let’s look at “The Truman Show.”
The reason why "The Truman" is put at the end is because the falsehoods targeted by his skepticism are more subtle. First of all, what Truman finally left was not a "Matrix"-style falsehood. The objects in Truman's life are basically the same as ours. His toothpaste isn't acrylic, and he doesn't eat paper cereal. That's right, his sky is a backdrop, and the ocean doesn't reach the other side. But these details in the film's narrative are not essential to Truman's worldview. In fact, we could design an enhanced version of "The Truman Show." Here, Truman's activities are completely unrestricted, and due to the development of technology, his every move can also be watched by others in a very hidden way. For example, people other than Truman can wear a kind of contact lens, and the glasses have the broadcast channel of "The Truman Show". Will Truman's sorrow be alleviated? It is true that he gained more freedom of action, but the restrictions on this freedom do not constitute the false essence of "The Truman Show". After all, his movements weren't really restricted until he never wanted to leave town, and his early experiences are no more "real" for that reason.
Another interpretation that often goes astray is that Truman left the studio to get rid of people's prying eyes on him and the social identity he was given, and to have a more real society and a more authentic life. Wait for him to discover it yourself. This aspect of the film can indeed trigger the uproar-like emotion of "Tonight we are all Truman." But "The Truman Show" doesn't just play up the slogan "Be yourself." After all, most rebellious teenagers have rebelled against the values ??and norms imposed on them by their parents and society, but they have not swung between Truman-style truth and falsehood. In the enhanced version of "The Truman Show" we just imagined, Truman can get out of the small town and find his father and first love without having to fight. He is free and can escape social norms, but he will still live in a "false" world.
Therefore, the falsehood of Truman’s world does not point to Truman’s physical environment nor to the social norms in which he lives. If Truman's understanding of the environment is biased, the bias is simply that Truman's experiences were designed, but he himself thought that all of them were spontaneous. Just like "I am not a program" and "I am not dreaming" in "The Matrix" and "Inception", "Everything I experience is spontaneous" is the dividing line between reality and falsehood in "The Truman Show" .
It should be noted that this kind of "spontaneity" is not completely opposite to "pre-designed". In the Christian worldview, God can predetermine everything. What to eat for breakfast today, whether it will rain tomorrow, and how long the A-share bull market will last, these may have been designed at the beginning of the world. However, what we lose may only be "free will", but we may not live in Truman's false world. To see this clearly, we can imagine a "Truman" who is not a reality star but a very smart ordinary person in a world of creational determinism. Suppose one day, Super Truman finally understands the cause and effect of all phenomena in the world, and discovers that many things that seemed "accidental" and "spontaneous" before were actually planned. He will probably leave this world like Truman - If he has such ability. However, the truth and falsehood that Super Truman faces are not Truman’s truth and falsehood. What Truman discovered was not the truth behind the world he lived in, but just that his life actually followed a different form.
We might as well understand "spontaneity" from the perspective of "intention". Here, "spontaneity" is no longer attached to scenes and events, but a behavioral motivation. If a person listens carefully and takes notes in class, it may be because he really loves reading, or it may be because he just wants to be praised. In a football game, everyone was playing in a lackluster manner. After the cheerleaders appeared, they immediately became energetic because the "intention" had undergone a subtle change. The scope of Truman's life may not be as vast as today's otakus and otakus. But in this limited space, everyone around him has the same intention towards him that is unknown to him, and all the scenes are arranged for this intention. It was not difficult to show Truman this intention - far easier than God showing mankind a picture of creation - but everyone was silent. The reason why Truman's assumption of "spontaneity" constitutes a skeptical context stems from the silence of most people about their own intentions. Here, the specific content of the intention does not seem to matter.
If "The Truman Show" is not a reality show, if the people in the town have other intentions, such as good intentions, let Truman live happily every day until he gets married at the age of 30, or malicious, let him live happily every day Drowning until the age of 30 may not arouse Truman's strong resistance, but when he discovered everyone's long-hidden intentions, his "false" disillusionment with the previous world where "everyone was awake and I was drunk alone" became It will not be weakened by this.
So, while The Truman Show is based on a reality show and ultimately demonstrates one man's courage to create a new life, the skeptical issues behind it are actually more problematic than those of The Matrix and Inception Space" is even more dirty: "Could it be that when people treat me like this, they actually have other intentions behind it?" As we said before, skepticism does not care about human freedom, but only involves human knowledge. From this perspective, although Truman is the least free protagonist among the three skeptical films, the skeptical context in which he lives is the least damaging to knowledge. If we were a brain in a vat, or a limbo, most of our beliefs would be false. "The Truman Show" is the opposite. Even if everyone around me is acting, I still eat apples and type on the keyboard. If I play online at midnight, I still won't be able to get out of bed the next day.
Compared to reality shows, "Matrix" and "Dreamland" are much stronger, and they are probably the most extreme forms of skepticism that movies can show. However, the philosopher's imagination is not limited by images. In "Meditations on First Philosophy", Descartes once imagined a deceptive devil who not only makes us think that our limbs are sound, but also makes us make mistakes in some of the simplest mathematical calculations. "2+3=5", do the math, right? But how do you know there isn't a devil lying to you? Maybe every time you think you are right, you are actually wrong?
Through our previous discussion, think about it, if you can't tell whether there is such a devil lying to you, then do you know "2+3=5"?
- Related articles
- New Jetta advertising slogan?
- Planning scheme of campus basketball competition (8 selected articles)
- Congratulations on my son's 20th birthday.
- Ningbo city slogan
- Trendy fitness studio names, stylish naming suggestions
- What are the common disinfection cabinets in daily life?
- When did tool 3 inventory appear?
- Can you hang two * * * party member household cards on a door?
- Collecting slogans and advertising words from gas companies
- How to use laser cutting machine safely